Chicago’s school board on Wednesday approved a revised student discipline code that curbs the use of suspensions and expulsions, and called on district officials to push privately-run charter schools to adopt the same approach.

Chicago Public Schools chief Barbara Byrd-Bennett said officials have spoken to charter networks to encourage them to sign on to the district’s disciplinary code and said “what we are exploring now is the legality in terms of whether we can force the issue.”

Data released this year showed charter schools have disproportionately high expulsion and suspension rates, figures that school board Vice President Jesse Ruiz called “mind-boggling.”

While 10 charter operations have signed onto the new code, most charters have not been in step with the district’s ongoing efforts to change a discipline code that was once considered one of the nation’s toughest. CPS is following a national trend toward using conflict resolution and other restorative justice practices in an effort to keep kids in the classroom.

In a statement, the Illinois Network of Charter Schools said that charters “take very seriously the issue of appropriate discipline and minimizing excess suspensions and expulsions across the district” and have a history of innovative approaches to discipline.

The revisions to the student code presented Wednesday, which were passed unanimously, eliminate mandatory expulsions for students below sixth grade for any infractions except those involving weapons.

In addition, students caught with cellphones will not face suspensions unless they're using the device to harass, incite violence or disrupt other students. The policy does away with the concept of “persistent defiance,” which could, for example be used against a student who threw a pen in anger several times.

Under the new code, school administrators are required to call in police only in cases that involve possession of firearms or drugs.

The board was also presented with the report of a legislative task force that was critical of the district’s school closings process last year, and called a 10-year facilities master plan “deeply flawed.”

“CPS has earned a D in terms of the things this report has investigated,” said Clarice Berry, a task force member and president of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association.

The district’s 10-year plan “is the first time we have a standard to evaluate CPS’ work on school actions,” Berry said. “We’ve given them credit for lots of things they’ve done right, but they’re a long way from a high quality plan that gets to best practices and high rigorous standards.”

A CPS spokesman again said the report was riddled with inaccuracies, while Berry noted that CPS’s arguments were included in the report.

District librarians also were at Wednesdays meetings to complain that their jobs are being eliminated by principals working with tight budgets. Megan Cusick, a librarian at an alternative school said half of of all district schools no longer have a certified librarian on staff, and that of the 50 schools that were designated to take in students from buildings that were closed, only 31 have a professional librarian.

“We’re an easy target,” Cusick said. “We don’t have a classroom, and with the negative press that CPS is killing arts programs, we’ve become a simple target.”

Byrd-Bennett said the district doesn’t have enough licensed librarians applying for jobs within CPS. “It’s not that we don’t want to have librarians in libraries, but the pool is diminished.”